[lit-ideas] Re: what did Indonesia do to deserve this?
- From: "Andy Amago" <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 5 Oct 2005 09:26:28 -0400
This all may be true. However, Hitchens isn't addressing any underlying
problems. He's saying basically they're nuts. If they're nuts, we're
doomed. Terrorism has been around forever. Germany had their terrorist
gangs in the 70's. The founders of Israel used it. That's what I thought
realistic about Kerry's position that terrorism is like prostitution or
gambling. It's here to stay. We can't eradicate it. All we can do is
reduce it to nuisance value. We hardly did that when we turned a camp fire
into a forest fire by invading a country on false pretenses. He doesn't
address any of that.
> [Original Message]
> From: Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx>
> To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: 10/5/2005 12:51:47 AM
> Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: what did Indonesia do to deserve this?
>
> Phil: One of the problems is that al Qaeda has now morphed. They're
> many cells functioning independently. On 9/11 they were pretty much
> one movement. Cells do what they want. Bali is popular with
> Westerners, and Australia supported the U.S. in Iraq, as did Spain
> and England.
>
> Eric: I think you missed the connection Hitchens made. And yes,
> Hitchens is saying something important here. You're just not getting
> it. They are not "pissed" any more than Hitler was "pissed." Their
> aims are imperialist. It only serves the interest of radical
> Islamists to call them "pissed," which is a way of shifting blame
> from the bomber to the victim.
>
> Jemaah Islamiyah, likely perps of the last bombing, are the local
> morph. Their grudge against the Australians is that (quoting
> Hitchens' article) "Australia sent troops to help safeguard the
> independence of East Timor and the elections that followed it."
>
> Describing the assassination of the Brazilian UN executive, Hitchens
> wrote: "De Mello had been the most devoted and humane of the world
> body's civil servants and had won himself golden opinions in
> Cambodia, Lebanon, Sudan, and the Balkans. But it was his role as
> U.N. supervisor of the transition in East Timor that marked him for
> death.
>
> "A communiqué from al-Qaida gloated over the end of "the personal
> representative of America's criminal slave, Kofi Annan, the diseased
> Sergio de Mello, criminal Bush's friend." It went on to ask, "Why
> cry over a heretic? Sergio Vieira de Mello is the one who tried to
> embellish the image of America, the crusaders and the Jews in
> Lebanon and Kosovo . . . . and he is the crusader that extracted a
> part of the Islamic land [East Timor]."
>
> Hitchens concludes: "East Timor was for many years, and quite
> rightly, a signature cause of the Noam Chomsky "left." The
> near-genocide of its people is an eternal stain on Indonesia and on
> the Western states that were complicit or silent. Yet Bin Ladenism
> wants not less of this killing and repression but more. Its demand
> to re-establish the caliphate is a pro-imperialist demand, not an
> anti-imperialist one."
>
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